Let’s Get Visible

Take your sales to the next level! The author of the award-winning, bestselling Let’s Get Digital is back with an advanced guide for more experienced self-publishers.

There are over 1.5 million books in the Kindle Store, with thousands more added every day. How do you get yours noticed? Visibility isn’t a challenge that can be bested once – it requires continual work. But there are tools and strategies to do much of the heavy lifting for you.

In Let’s Get Visible: How To Get Noticed And Sell More Books, you’ll discover how to:

Leverage Amazon’s famous recommendation engine to take advantage of the various opportunities it provides for exposure

Position your books for discoverability on other sales venues

Minimize the time you spend promoting so you have more time to spend writing

Promote in a cost-effective way that actually works

By using these tips, you will get your book noticed. And getting noticed is the key to growing your sales.

But hey, that’s marketing copy. Here’s what the first reviewers had to say:

“Let’s Get Visible is the best tool I have discovered for a writer to push sales and visibility to the next level, and an indispensable addition to the library of any indie writer. If you’re an indie writer and you’re not buying this book, you simply aren’t playing this game to win.” — Michael Wallace, bestselling author of The Righteous.

“Gaughran distills complex subject matter and explains it in a way that anybody can easily understand, and takes the guesswork out of promotion at Amazon. He removes the mysticism and gets you as close as anyone outside of Amazon will probably be to understanding how stuff works behind the curtain.” — David Wright, bestselling author of Yesterday’s Gone.

“If you are a self-publisher looking to improve your ability to get eyeballs on your books, I can’t recommend this title highly enough. The book contains many ideas I’ve used successfully and several I’m now excited to try.” — Cidney Swanson, bestselling author of Saving Mars.

You can check out all the reviews on Amazon US and Amazon UK, and, if you hadn’t guessed already, you can grab a copy at:

As promised, my mailing list was told about the new release before anyone else, and they’ve been busy sending the book to #2 in the Writing category on Amazon. The only thing blocking its path is something called Let’s Get Digital.

I’ve been running a 99c sale on Digital (links here) to celebrate the launch of Visible and at this point both books are amplifying each other’s sales. Digital was picked up by the good people at Pixel of Ink yesterday, which really boosted my numbers, and I took out an ad on BookBlast.

The logic behind promoting Digital to help Visible is obvious, but the reason my mailing list heard about the launch first is because I’m deploying a launch strategy from the book called Spreading the Love.

So far, it’s working very well, and Visible should nose past Digital at some point today, now that the door has been crashed down.

* * *

I had been circling the idea of Let’s Get Visible for some time.

While there are plenty of books to help self-publishers just starting out, or those still on the fence, there is little on the market for more experienced self-publishers. The books that are out there – at least the ones I sampled – seem to push strategies that are either ineffective, time-consuming, or, to be honest, at least somewhat shady.

I was also keenly aware that marketing is the area where self-publishers need the most help. I get more comments and questions about promotional strategies than any other topic. It’s also the area where self-publishers waste the most money, and, crucially, time.

The aim of Let’s Get Visible is to teach you how to replace costly, time-consuming promotional strategies with ones that actually work, and won’t eat into precious writing time.

I had a lot of help with this book. Authors a lot more successful than me were extremely generous with their time, their data, their insights into how Amazon works, and how to capitalize on the visibility opportunities there. I must single out a few for special mention.

Debora Geary pretty much pioneered this marketing approach, and was very patient in (repeatedly) explaining to me how all the various algorithms worked and how an author could take advantage of them. Ed Robertson and Phoenix Sullivan did all the heavy lifting in breaking down crucial things like the Popularity lists and how they are calculated (and how that effects marketing plans). I’m merely reporting back from the front.

Phoenix also took the time to read an earlier draft, along with Monique Martin and Cidney Swanson. When you have a team of bestselling authors beta-reading your book, you can’t go too far wrong.

So many more writers shared sales numbers and marketing strategies, and provided advice and encouragement. If I named them all, this would turn into an Oscar speech, but they know who they are, and they have my unending gratitude. This book would not have been possible without the openness of the self-publishing community, and its willingness to experiment and share results.

It also wouldn’t have been possible without my blog readers, who provided a sounding board for ideas and endless data grist for the theory mill, as well as continuing encouragement to get the bloody thing finished!

Thanks guys.

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11 Responses to Let’s Get Visible

‘Let’s Get Visible’ certainly has been timely for me – and for all of the reasons you state above. I have made some advances into the indie writing world (two YA novels now on Amazon) but have been feeling increasingly overwhelmed by the many ‘you must do this’ promotional demands. Your book is giving me some nice straight answers, and also helping me with the ‘don’ts’, which I was grappling with because some writers I respect seem to be practicing them, which was making me feel I had to as well.

I was at the recent ALLI online forum where you presented (and I was at the abandoned one the week before!), but unfortunately my server kept dropping out this time around, so I never got to put my questions forward. Orna Ross mentioned that we could visit you here at your blog and ask our questions. I’ve looked around for a place to comment and settled on this spot. I hope that’s OK.

I have two questions. (Forgive me all of the background context for the first.)

1. Does Amazon sometimes create its own categories that are different to the ones you select when you publish, and should you just stay with them when you find your book in one?

Context: I write YA sci-fi/fantasy. As I’ve been feeling quite overwhelmed with it all, I have just stuck with Amazon for the time being, tackling things bit by bit. My books barely rated initially, then jumped into #1 free book positions for five days in several categories in a recent free promotion. I promptly tried putting my books into these categories. (I had them in different categories.) One of those was ‘video game adaptations’ (sort of related to my stuff) but when I hunted through Amazon’s categories I couldn’t find it. So I went for something as close as possible that referred to computers and technology, though still in fiction.

When my free promo finished, my ratings quickly dropped back to normal, however in the last week they have begun rating well under another category: ‘Education & Reference > Science & Technology > Computers’. This feels a bit removed from what my books actually are, however when I look, I do see books which my readers are certainly into (e.g. about Minecraft). I guess I should just leave things as they are, as I’m finally visible in a category, but wondered if you had any thoughts or advice? The other category is larger (hard science fiction), which is why I haven’t rated there I guess, but possibly I will in time, as I was #1 there in the free promos in several countries.

2. I find it very interesting (and quite like it) that you have included your personal email address at the back of your books in the ‘About the author’ section. I wonder if you could comment on why you have done that? Especially as there are many other ways a reader can contact you through social media. Are you concerned about unwanted or spam emails?

My apologies for this lengthy comment (writers write) and thank you for both of the Let’s Get books, which I’m now happily working through

I just bought “Let’s Get Visible”. Thanks for all your work towards putting this together. Quick question, what are your thoughts on using KDP Select? We are about to publish a video-enhanced eBook and were considering whether or not to be exclusive with Amazon. I’ve also submitted a ticket to KDP Select re the multimedia nature of our book. Interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Some really great advice here. Thanks, David!
What websites do you use to get international reach for your book promos (discount / free / giveaways etc.)?
In case, like me, you hadn’t yet found a good answer to this question, you may like to know that there is now a totally unique solution to this and some of the other frustrations of promoting your book promotions called Readers in the Know: http://www.readersintheknow.com/home
It works a little differently to most of the others in that you only need to add your book and author details once, after which they’ll be permanently listed. Promos and events can then be scheduled with just a few clicks and readers can choose to browse from all books in the database, all those with a promo scheduled within the next 90 days, or from those on promo that specific day.